In the West, the streaming service Twitch has been booming since the pandemic broke out in 2020. In China, live streaming services like Taobao from Alibaba are also on the rise. Now new recommendations have come from a ministry on how streamers should express themselves and dress.
What is the Twitch of China? In China, it is extremely difficult for Western services to gain market access. China’s tech sector has grown by copying existing Western services. The giant in gaming today, Tencent, began its rise by developing ‘China’s answer to AoL’. The head of the company Huateng ‘Pony Ma’ Ma has been regarded as the ‘King of Copycats’ since then.
The Chinese Twitch is called Taobao and comes from Alibaba, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon. This is ironic because ‘our’ Twitch was also bought by ‘our’ Amazon.
Taobao dominates live streaming in China with almost 80% market share, alongside other streaming offerings from Baidu or JD.co. Livestreams also take place on the Chinese equivalent of TikTok (Douyin).
What are these new regulations? The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has now issued guidelines for streaming for the first time. It states:
- It is recommended to speak high Mandarin – the official language of China, as there are many dialects and languages of ethnic minorities in China.
- Streamers should also dress ‘appropriately’ in a way that is ‘not offensive to viewers’ and that ‘aligns with the values and ideals of the service or product being promoted.’
- Additionally, it is recommended to refrain from ‘vulgar’ and ‘pornographic’ content.
Live streaming in China is primarily used for e-commerce
What is the purpose of the regulations? While streaming in the West focuses on gaming and entertainment, livestreams in China are heavily used for selling products, for e-commerce. According to the site Inven, about 430 million Chinese viewers watched an ‘e-commerce livestream’ in 2019. By March 2020, that number had grown to 560 million.
Influencers in China are said to earn hundreds of thousands of US dollars promoting products.
There have apparently been complaints that streamers are ‘misrepresenting’ products. Customers have said that streamers are deceiving them by spreading false sales figures.
Standardized rules are now intended to make it easier for customers to evaluate products before they buy.
In China, there are some harsh rules that are dictated ‘from above’:
